Chinese College Dorms

by John Pasden

26 Mar 2005

Here’s a photo comparison of some Chinese college dorms. (Sorry, none of these pictures were taken for the purpose of comparing the dorm rooms, so they’re not perfect.)

Some of the commonalities you will find are: no full mattresses, no hot running water in the room, one room, not super spacious. Students get hot water by bringing it in thermoses (see Hangzhou pic). There are public showering facilities.

Hangzhou

ZUCC, my former workplace, is definitely the nicest of the three. There are only four bunks in a rather large room by Chinese dorm standards. The bunks have decently thick pads. There’s running water (cold) in the room’s own bathroom, and a squat toilet. You can’t see them, but I’m sure at least some of the students have computers on their desks.

Unidentified Location in China

I believe this photo to be more typical of many dorm rooms across China. The “bed pad” is probably a woven mat. It’s hard to tell if that top “bunk” is actually a bunk or not, but by the “toothbrush cups” on the desk we can deduce that six students live in this room. The clothes you see hanging up are drying after being hand-washed. I’ve seen other (poor) schools in Hangzhou that looked like this.

Beijing

I actually stayed one night in this very room in 2001. I forget the name of the school, but the campus was located northwest of city center, within walking distance of the Summer Palace. (Don’t misunderstand; I’m not trying to imply that Tsinghua Universtity dorms or Peking University dorms look anything like this!) Note the pipes coming out of the walls. The light hung from a wire in the ceiling. The newspapers are pasted to the walls because the white paint is so cheap that it will rub off on you if you touch it directly. You can see the woven bed mat here. The white object on the upper bunk is a blanket, not a pad.

If you have pictures to add to the comparison, please e-mail them to me.

Comments

Paint? Whether it’s technically classified as plaster or as whitewash, I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t call it paint. In any case, it’s common enough around China, so you have to be careful about leaning against indoor walls or you might end up with white dust all over your back.

It amazes me that they’re able to successfully complete college, living in conditions like this. Hell, I dropped out of college after one year in the States, and the dorm was like a hotel room by comparison!

Incidentally, I dropped out because I discovered that what I thought I wanted to do for a living wasn’t, in fact, what I wanted at all…which is another luxury students in China don’t have, I understand. Ugh!

In china, wherever you go, things are almost the same.4 students at least in one room, no bargain!
but in the overseas students’ dorms,things are totally different…
one or two students sharing a room equiped with AC and toilet is common.

I know when I tell my students about American dorm rooms, they are quite shocked. The Chinese college student dorms are certainly spartan, but also, it touches me that some of them can try to make the best of it–despite the hardships and they have to PAY to take showers!
The resident dorm rooms for first year teachers here–would break your heart, far worse than the students–extremely filthy.
It definitely makes me very lenient with them. I don’t think I could study being cold or hot all the time.

Sleeping on a wooden board cot is nothing compared to the unheated concrete wall dorm rooms in the winter. While the foreign teachers are up in the apartments with the heat units (wall mounted) and bitching that they are inefficient and not working (it’s as cold inside as it is outside – freezing 0 degrees), unless you’re directly sitting in the vent of the heater), the students have valid reason to complain because at 11pm, the power went out (to prevent students from staying up, watching TV, surfing the net – and you know damn well, they’d all stay up late if they could), but more importantly, the power went out so their personal heaters would be rendered useless all night, during the coldest parts of the night. A few students would complain about this to me during the winters, but the majority of them just bundled up.

Now, if you wanted to compare the student dorms to the cafeteria worker dorms… you’d be sitting at dinner and the food would be served. Sometimes you’d be watching the food too closely and catch a glimpse of the hand of the waitress – and fingers would be blue, purple, or even black from frostbite.

Ahh, it’s nice to look out and see a blue spring sky right now as I type.

The organisation I’m working for is currently building a new dormitory building for the Guanting middle school. At the moment, they have so little room that the younger (smaller) students sleep 3 to a bed, and the beds are about the same size as in those photos. 5 bunks in a room = 10 beds = 30 students. There’s no heating either, of course.

Though I am a student from Hangzhou(Zhejiang gongshang University,once was called Hangzhou University of commerce),our dorms’ condition is not as good as the first picture is shown. I have 4 roommates,we share 3 beds of top and down bunks.(This makes us have a vacancy bunk to put our stuffs) We haven’t got own bathroom as well as toilet,and also get hot water by thermoses.The suck thing is that even our floor is wooden.It can be very dangerous for us to use computer or aother appliance which may outgo much more electricity,cause it catches fire easily.

Wow, those pictures brought back so much memories. I have never seen a picture of any college dorm room since I graduated years ago. But from what people told me, I’m actually quite amazed by the changes. We used to have eight girls in one room (four bunks), one public bathroom and shower room for the whole floor (25 rooms, 200 people one floor), no hot water. In the winter, we would buy 4 hot water bottles to get enough hot water for a quick shower. The alternative is to wait in the cold for two hours before the public shower room (with hot water shower) open to get in before it closes.

Damn, those are pretty nasty rooms! But the outside of the dorms are often worse than the inside. China’s weird like that. It doesn’t look backwards at times so much as some sort of futuristic dystopia.

Take my study life for an example.When I studied in junior school,we had 16 persons in our room;When I sdudied in high school,we had 8 persons in our room;When I studied in university,we had 4 persons in our room;now,I’m studying in an institute for postgraduate degree,we have 3 persons in our room;and in the futture when I study for doctor’s degree,we will have 1~2 persons in our room.

well, I’m terribled to think of my next year college life, but the truth is the truth. What i have to do, i think, is just to get over it, like,experiencing something unsual and yet wonderful from a new aspect.

I looked for some imformatiion about america collge life and chinese college life,I finally found this.I’m chinese ,those pictures are not ture,
in university we do not stay in dorms like those,if it happens,the university
counldn’t be permissed.
at least all college i see in china is not,and my high school is not ,too.pictures

I am chinese , and I study in Wuhan techology and science unversity zhongnan branch ,Hubei province ,China .I think those picture of chinese collage dorms is for a few college students many years ago. I am in the 4 person dorms .it is so better than those dorms . there is internet Broad for us though Its speed of Broad Band is so slow. And each guys in our dorm has personal computer .But I must admit there have a lot of defects in chinese collage dorms .for example, No hot running water in the bathroom, no single room for us etc. If I take same picture of our dorms I shoud post them on this web page.

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